


Alternative Medicine

by Ilral



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, F/M, Horror, One-Sided Attraction, Pyrrhic Victory, Runes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-21 04:36:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11349990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilral/pseuds/Ilral
Summary: She might be sobbing in a bush with her mask off, but Tuuri's fine, right? And if she isn't, surely Reynir can find something to help her.Surely.





	Alternative Medicine

Reynir had never been the type to sneak out at night. Not for lack of motivation—plenty of his hometown friends had dared him to slip through an unsecured window and jog down the road a few kilometers to their houses, where they promised all sorts of teenage debauchery. He'd never taken them up on the offer—he was too afraid of what his parents would do to him if they found out. After a while, his friends had stopped asking. Most of them stopped hanging around him altogether.

But now Reynir had something worth breaking the rules for. Though he'd never admit it, he'd been a little annoyed when Lalli and Emil brought back two tents. He was pretty sure Mikkel had only asked for one, but instead of chewing them out the interim commander had commended them on solving one of his problems. Tuuri, despite still showing no signs of infection, could be safely kept in a separate tent. This was a problem for Reynir, because he had what could be charitably called a little bit of a crush on her.

He peered out through the mesh window of the tent door. Emil and Lalli were snoring behind him, the Finn unconsciously twining his fingers through the Swede's hair. Reynir sucked in a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out before pulling down the zipper on the tent's door. No going back now. The door flopped aside and a rush of dry, cold air gave him goosebumps. Lalli hissed and pulled his legs closer to his body. Probably just a bad dream.

Reynir stepped into his shoes and turned around to close the tent door. To avoid the noise of the zipper, he simply did up the button at the top. There was no snow on the ground, but he still winced with every step as the pine needles crunched under his soles. The moon was waning, and he squinted to make out the other tent. 

The other tent was a fair bit larger than his own, though Mikkel had made sure to give everyone an even share of space by filling half of it with books. Neither of those things explained why one of the tent's two flaps was hanging open. Reynir peered inside. There were plenty of things that could have obscured his view, but he swore that Tuuri wasn't in the tent. The ovoid indent in the mattress next to Sigrun only strengthened his suspicions. He peered around, but it was too dim to see where his goal was.

Crouching down, he inspected the ground. It would have been a lot easier to find her footprints if there was snow on the ground, or if his braid wasn't brushing the fallen needles about in spirographic patterns. Eventually he found a few divots in the ground cover that led to a few more, then a few more, and so on, until he came upon a bush that had been rudely pushed aside. He pumped his fist in the air a little—the hours he'd spent tracking down lost sheep had finally paid off.

Tuuri was sitting cross-legged in the small clearing behind the bush. Her upturned eyes reflected the clear starlight shining down from above. She jumped and yelped as he sat down next to her. Reynir jumped too, though he managed to catch his own yell before making yet more noise. They crouched there for a moment, staring at each other, before Tuuri spoke in a terse whisper.

"Reynir? Wha-what are you doing outside?" 

His heart dropped a little when he heard the note of anguish in her voice, but he still had the lie ready. "Just getting some fresh air" His brow grew moist with sweat despite the cold night air.

"You could get really hurt out here, though. It's not safe!" The despair was still in her voice. She smelled of sea-spray, and her face was streaked with tears. Her mask was nowhere to be found.

"That didn't stop you," he replied, flashing a grin.

"I'm not sure I can get much worse." Tuuri rubbed her shoulder absentmindedly. "I heard a few voices whispering in my head while I was packing the books this afternoon, and-and I saw the rash on my shoulder!"

Reynir sat there for a moment. There was a throbbing pressure behind his eyes, and his breath caught in his throat. "Maybe... maybe it’s something else that’s not related to the infection. I mean, my aunt heard all sorts of strange things and got a rash when she had that nasty fever, maybe that's what happened to you!"

Tears welled up in her eyes, and he noticed the redness about them and the dried streaks down her face. A sob tore out of her throat, wet and raw. He tried not to clench his hands as he waited for her reply. 

"I know what's going on, okay!" He recoiled as anger entered her voice. "I didn’t go to bed this afternoon! I spent three hours staring into the sea, deciding whether or not to  _ throw myself in! _ " Tuuri looked down at her hands folded in her lap. "Just leave me alone." 

There was a long, tense silence. Reynir stood up suddenly, hands balled into fists. "No!" She looked up at him, narrowing her eyes. "I-I can do something about this! I've got to—maybe my powers can help?" 

"If mages could cure the Rash, don't you think they would have by now?" she asked, blinking back tears, but he was already gone. 

 

He sat next to the still-glowing embers, tossing wads of paper into them and watching them glow and blacken and curl away into nothing. He'd used up half a ream of spare paper and a few disposable pens writing out the runes, and not a single one of them was right. He'd been trying to modify the basic troll-repelling rune to repel the infectious particles—drive them out of her body—but nothing felt right. He scrawled out another prototype and ran his hand over it. The magical field pressed against his hand like an static charge, but it felt rough and uneven.

Reynir growled, and threw the rune into the fire with the others. He clasped his hands to his head, exhaling sharply through his teeth. Why couldn't the runes just be simple and follow their own rules? What did the sybils possibly have to gain by making this more difficult than it had to be? He pressed against his temples, humming in an attempt to focus. Maybe he was going about this the wrong way—maybe the runes he needed weren't at all like the ones he'd made before.

He tried to think of other places that he'd seen runes before. There were the protective runes woven into their clothes, of course, but those only kept out cold, not viruses. Maybe an attraction rune like the ones he'd seen painted onto the sides of whaling ships in Reykjavik? They certainly helped the whalers avoid infection. Perhaps instead of attracting only clean whales, it could attract clean,er, body parts? No, that was silly. He wracked his brain fruitlessly for a few moments before he remembered something else from that trip. A museum from before the rash, built out of glass and steel in the old style. His mother had taken him and his siblings there while Dad was negotiating a deal downtown. 

Something had caught his eye while he was there. Nestled among ancient housewares there was a small enclosed area with a few relics from about 400 years before the rash. There had been a rune inscribed into a sheet of parchment in one of the cases, but he couldn't remember what it was for. Still, it was worth a shot. Grabbing another sheet, he scribbled out a very rough copy of the strange symbol and passed his hand over it.

It was as if an icicle had been driven through his palm. Reynir yelled and nearly fell off of the log he'd been sitting on. Mikkel looked over at him from the laundry bucket and shouted something that sounded concerned. "I'm fine!" he yelled in reply, and picked up the rune from where it had fallen. He stuck a finger over the inscription cautiously, and gasped. The edge of the rune's magic burned against his finger like cold fire. There was power here, maybe enough to save Tuuri. 

 

Thick clouds had rolled in by the time Reynir snuck out of the tent that night. In whispers and notes on scraps of paper throughout the afternoon he and Tuuri had agreed on a meeting point. He doubted he could have found her otherwise. 

She frowned at him as he pushed through the bramble and sat down slightly behind her. "This won't work, you know that, right?" 

Reynir didn't reply immediately as he pulled the small bottle of ink out of his coat. "You're still letting me try, though." 

Tuuri shrugged, wincing as the motion pulled at the tender skin on her wound. She fumbled at her parka's straps before shrugging it off. Reynir blushed a little at the sight of her undershirt.

The blush got a few shades darker as she crossed her arms at the base of her torso and pulled the undershirt over her head. It got stuck as it moved up past her neck and turned inside out. She struggled to get it past her outstretched elbows, and Reynir couldn't help but stare at her exposed back.  It was so much smoother than his, from the base of her dainty neck down to the adorable little roll of pudge where her pants were cinched on. The small of her back was so perfectly concave, he was almost willing to risk running his hand over it softly.

He looked up quickly as she finally pulled the shirt up over her head and set it down on top of her parka. She glanced back at him and the furrows on her forehead got a little deeper. Reynir cleared his throat and looked back down at her shoulder. There was a small cluster of scabby red boils in the area of the wound, and—oh, there was the feeling of his stomach dropping again. He blinked back the tears and lifted his brush.

Tuuri gasped a little as he started brushing on the ink, and it wicked the heat away from her skin. The pattern slowly took shape. It appeared different from other runes even with only the broad strokes placed. Instead of a crossed circle with branching, curling linework, this rune consisted of a pair of concentric circles and a shallow seven-pointed star inscribed inside them. 

Once he had marked out the outline, he flipped the brush around and dipped the pointy end into the ink to begin marking out the lettering. Again this rune differed from tradition—the text was all in modern Icelandic. It was nothing special, just a short prayer to an unspecified being. The original rune had been intended to protect from elves and their ilk, but this one asked for the pestilence to be drawn out of Tuuri and safely spirited away.

The common practice with painted runes was to leave a line broken so that the rune could be activated at a later date. Reynir had done this here, and as he filled in the small gap in the outer ring something extraordinary happened. The redness around Tuuri's wound seemed to seep backwards towards the bite mark, and he gave her a hopeful glance as the boils began to deflate and retract into her skin. Had this been the answer all along?

They sat there, both too astonished to speak, until something odd happened. The ink of the rune began to glow a soft red, almost imperceptibly at first but then brighter and brighter. Tuuri gritted her teeth and rubbed at the mark, irritated. The glow intensified until it shone straight through the flesh of her fingers and she let out a short scream to go with the flash of blinding light before the clearing was dark and silent once again. "Fuck! That hurt!" 

Reynir leaned in to inspect her shoulder, trying not to blush again as he got close. There was a strong scent of burning meat, but he couldn't see any scorch marks or smoke on her. Unfortunately, the rune was also absent and the boils appeared to have returned. He thudded back onto the ground, scratching his head. "I don't get it."

"What's there to get? It didn't work and that's that." asked Tuuri, rubbing her shoulder. She picked up her undershirt and began sliding it back on, much to his disappointment.

"I've never seen a rune react like that. I mean, there's those ghost-runes I made, but those just burst into flame. I guess it's a good thing—"

"Well, you don't know much about rune craft." Tuuri's biting tone was starting to be replaced by sadness. Reynir mumbled thoughtfully as she continued. "We can't try again, it's too... too much of a risk for you. I'm sorry, I know you really wanted this to work. Maybe there's some things that—" He stood suddenly, nearly bowling her over.

"I  _ will _ make this work." He said, before stomping out of the clearing.

 

Reynir threw himself down on the bed, furious with himself. Despite his anger, exhaustion quickly overcame him and he fell asleep. The next time he opened his eyes, he was dreaming. This wasn't a normal dream, or even one of his recent weird mage-dreams. No, in this dream he was standing in a silent room clouded by wood smoke. Five men, all wearing clothes similar to his own, stood around a broad table, all facing away from him. The taller ones had to lean down to fit into the tiny room. 

He reached out to tap one on the shoulder, and it's seemingly supple leather coat was hard as stone to his touch. He yelped and jumped back as that one suddenly threw up an arm, but it didn't appear to be reacting to him. Although he couldn't hear a thing, the men appeared to be in the middle of a very spirited argument. Every so often, one of them would gesture down at a group of papers on the table. He stuck his head between two of them to take a look.

The papers on the table mostly appeared to be scribbled notes in Icelandic and clippings from newspapers, but perched on top of the pile was a sheet of parchment with the very rune he had painted onto Tuuri less than an hour ago. Strange, but he supposed this was probably because it was one of those dreams that told you something. But what?

The men appeared to be getting even angrier. A few of them were clutching half-empty glasses of schnapps, and one of them raised his in a gesture of rage. The others fell silent, and he glared at them before slamming the glass back down on the table. Everyone in the room jumped as it exploded into razor shards and the one who had slammed it reared back, hand bloodied. A few drops splashed across the rune on the table.

The men in the dream kept panicking, but Reynir froze as he heard the first sound in the dream. A roar, somewhere between pleasure and pain, tore through the room as the blood soaked into the rune. The whole building began to shake, and thin trails of dust spiraled down from the rafters. A few of the men looked up and ran out of the room, while the others stared at the rune, aghast. The others fled as the shaking increased, and the dust began to fall in sheets, nearly obscuring the door.

The dust passed harmlessly through Reynir's body, so he figured it would probably be safe to stay in here and see what was happening. His patience was rewarded when he saw a flicker of motion near the rune. The clouds of dust were pushed apart, and a small tube of clear air rose from the surface of the parchment. As the rumbling continued to intensify, the tube was followed by four others, which joined at the base to form a hand outlined in the dusty air, attached to a forearm that led back into the rune. 

He took a step back as the hand moved towards him, but it rapidly descended to rest on the table. Whatever this thing was, it was pulling itself up out of the rune, and the forearm rapidly gained an upper arm and a shoulder to match. A full torso emerged before the motion stopped again, with a bowed head attached that rose to face Reynir directly. The room was shaking so hard he could barely keep his balance-the door was invisible through the murky air. 

A mouth opened on the bottom of the head, and the dust swirled in. Both of the beings in the room stood perfectly still for a moment until a voice rasped through the air, booming even louder than the rumbling and distinctly female. " _ You really care about her, don’t you? _ " 

"Excuse me?"

" _ Ah, to be alive and in love. But love won’t be enough to accomplish your goal _ " The ghost, if that's what it was, did not move its mouth as the voice rang through the air.

He gaped at the being. "You mean, to save Tuuri?"

" _ Yes! Save her, save her! I can do this, but there is a price to be paid. I have traveled far to reach you, and my throat is parched. _ " 

"I will do anything you need, name it!"

" _ Anything? _ "

"I swear by the gods above!"

The rumbling was nearly deafening by this point, and the ghost's mouth opened wider than ever. " _ THEN SATE MY THIRST. _ " A few drops of blood welled up from the parchment and began to flow up through the ghost, leaving behind intricate traces of arteries and veins. " _ BIND ME IN BLOOD, AND SHE WILL LIVE _ ." There was a loud cracking sound, and the rafters fell inwards as the ghost's shell of dust collapsed. Reynir felt a single instant of searing pain, then nothing.

He woke a few hours later, soaked in sweat and with Kisa chewing on his hair.

 

While the others were eating dinner that night, Reynir was hiding in his tent. He glanced at the short knife in his hand, turning it end over end as he mulled over what the ghost had said. He'd never heard anything about blood or body parts being useful in magic before. The closest thing he could think of was ink made with bone char, which he had heard was the best type for painting runes.His ink was just regular charcoal, though, but it had worked fine for repelling ghosts.

Still, if using blood was the answer... He held the knife against his bicep, hesitant. It was pretty warm in the tent, but the blade seemed freezing cold. What was wrong with him, that he couldn't do this? Why was he so weak, that he couldn't take a little bit of pain in exchange for a human life? But what if it didn't work? No, no, it had to work. It had to!

Before he could think again, Reynir pushed down hard on the blade. The first thing he noted was that there was more resistance than he had expected, or maybe his left hand was just weaker than his right. The pain hit him then, and he couldn't help but yell. He clamped his mouth shut, but he could already hear the commotion from outside. "It's alright, I just stubbed my toe! I'm fine now!" he shouted through gritted teeth. There was a burst of chatter in Swedish and Danish from outside as his message was translated, then the commotion stopped. Good.

He unstoppered his bottle of ink and poured it out into a small bowl,before holding it up under his wound to catch the blood. Despite the searing pain, only a few ruby drops had seeped out. He sat there, jaw clenched, waiting for more blood to seep out. A few moments passed, each one creeping by agonizingly slowly, but the bowl barely got any fuller. This was taking too long! He relaxed slightly as he began to think about how to speed things up.

As Reynir released the tension in his arm, the blood began to flow in a steady trickle. It wasn't long before the bowl was full and he clenched his arm again, fumbling around for the bandage he'd stolen from Mikkel's stock. Where had he left it? The bandage must have gotten stuck under something as he looked for the bowl in his tent. His arm was beginning to tire. As he found the strip of cloth, it gave out, and a pool of blood began to spread on the tent floor. 

In a panic, he wrapped the bandage around his arm and tied it off quickly, ignoring the quickly spreading red blotch. He couldn't risk getting blood on these clothes-it would raise too many questions before he had time to execute his plan. He grabbed the first absorbent thing he could see—one of the blankets that was crumpled in the corner—and threw it on the puddle. The blood spread through it and soon half of the formerly-white cloth was stained. The other blankets would make an adequate cover for now, and he could think about what happened later when that moment came.

Swirling the bowl around mixed the blood with the ink, leaving behind a maroon liquid that he quickly poured back into his bottle through a funnel. The rubber stopper would hopefully keep the mix from congealing for a few hours. Reynir stood up, pulling his sleeve down over the bandage and checking his outfit for any blood spots. The hard part was over, now all he had to do was talk to Tuuri. 

  
  


"Seriously Reynir, this again?" Tuuri's voice was exhausted, and there were bags under her eyes. If he hadn't been there, Reynir wouldn't have believed that she had awoken at one in the afternoon that day. 

"You're running out of time!" His face was already tear-streaked, but it was hard to tell if he was crying as the raindrops streaked down his face. They were in the same clearing as two days ago—the team had stalled pending the end of the stormy weather. 

She turned to face him. "I'm already out of time! You're the one who's running out of time to keep trying your damn magic!" Spittle sprayed on the inside of the breathing mask as she yelled at him. There was a long moment where the only sound was the fall of rain on the pine boughs above. Tuuri sighed, and began to undress, trying to ignore Reynir's failing attempts to hide his interest. "Just get it over with."

"Alright." Reynir took a deep breath of paper-scented filtered air, and pulled the bottle from his coat. Using his body to cover the wet paint, he began to recreate the rune. He tried to ignore the profusion of bloody blisters and scabs that were already there, and the disturbing putty-like quality of the skin—it seemed to squish under his brush and not move back after he lifted the tool. Despite the rain and the non-ink substances that had been mixed with it, the ink stuck to her skin almost perfectly. It probably had something to do with the magic of the rune.

The first time he'd drawn this rune onto her, his hand had been slow and fumbling. He'd been distracted, at least a little, and hadn't practiced much on a curved surface. This time, he worked a lot faster, despite the rain and darkness. It was only when he was almost finished that he realized that he had been holding his breath. Reynir looked up, emitting a relieved sigh, and saw a pair of indentations in the mud. His next breath caught in his throat. They looked like footprints, but there were just two of them, freestanding in the middle of the muck. 

He shook his head, and the indentations disappeared. With a flick of the brush, he finished the rune and leaned back. Again, the redness vanished and the blisters receded. Unlike the last rune, once they had retreated the rune persisted. There was a sudden, striking tightness in Reynir's chest. He sat there, gasping like a fish, as Tuuri ran her hand over her shoulder, amazed. A hissing roar began to echo in his head as his vision blurred, and he could swear that he made out a shape outlined in the rain, leaning down to face Tuuri.

Though he barely heard it, the voice from his dream began to speak again as the rune started to glow. " _ You'll need a lot more than that _ ." The pain receded suddenly, and the figure vanished as the rune flashed and vanished like the last one. He propped himself up on his elbows and watched the rash spread back across Tuuri's arm. She was sobbing. He could feel the tears building behind his eyes, too. " _ It's okay, boy. Your memories of her will stop hurting after a while _ ."

His head was pounding. "No!" he yelled. She looked at him, eyes shining with tears. "NO!" His hands were looking through his pockets for something, he didn't know what. She saw the bandage around his arm, and the reddish fluid spilling from the bottle he had dropped. She gaped.

"What did you do?" Her voice was intense, but like her face it couldn't seem to settle on embarrassment, anger, or utter despair.

Reynir had already picked utter despair, himself. Every part of him was quivering. He wanted to throw up, or punch something, or just cry his eyes out, but instead he just felt empty. He needed more, more, more of everything. More blood, sure, but more time, more practice, more of her. Her... Reynir's eyes flashed with inspiration. "I know what to do." His voice was flat. She gave him a strange look, then tensed and began to stand.. The knife was heavy in his hand. 

They both moved at once, and neither was sure after exactly how Tuuri ended up pinned under him, trying to hold her face out of the muck. His eyes were wide, and sad. She only had time to shout "What're you—" before the knife pierced her shoulder and the rest of her sentence was cut short by a scream. By the time he'd carved the outer layer of the rune into her diseased flesh, Reynir could barely see what he was doing through the mixture of blood and rainwater that was running from the wound.

Was she screaming again? He couldn't tell anymore. It didn't matter, he was almost done. This was a nice knife, especially the tip. Pointy, good for the lettering. The handle was a bit slippery, though. Oh, that was probably the blood. For the most part, he'd constructed this one just like the others, leaving a tiny gap so that he could ensure it was properly constructed. Just to be safe, he leaned back a little and examined his handiwork. 

A wave of doubt swept over him. His hands were red, her undershirt was red, the ground under them was red. How could someone survive losing this much blood? It must have mixed with the rainwater—her hands were still clawing madly at the ground, trying to pull herself out from under him.  She pulled her face out of the mud and spat out a mouthful before crying for help, then gasped. He had nicked open the final bit of skin holding open the outer circle of the rune.

A funny thing happened then.  It was as if there was some sort of suction, pulling the blood off of his fingers. The pool was acting strangely, too. The blood was forming droplets, but they seemed to be facing upwards. She was out of breath, but Tuuri's fists clenched as every bit of her blood that had been spilled around them was pulled into the air. It formed a rough sphere that hovered in the air, and for a moment Reynir swore he could see a handprint in the liquid before  his vision went white and there was a crack of thunder.

When his vision returned, he looked down at Tuuri. She had fallen into the muck, and her hands had stopped moving. He flopped off of her, an inexplicable feeling of delight filling him. He rolled her over and noticed that her chest was still. A rush of panic flowed over him for a moment, and then she sputtered. a few globs of muddy spit flew from her mouth, and she took a long, shallow breath, her eyes still closed.  He wiped some of the mud off of her face and lay down next to her.

He stared at the stars for a moment, then glanced over at her shoulder from where he lay. The lines of the rune had gaped open, showing him a cross-section of muscle and skin. He could even see a few veins, yet no blood spilled from it.  It was ugly, but the skin around it was clear. He started to giggle, then let loose a full blown laugh. For the moment, he ignored her shivering. He ignored the whispers on her breath. He ignored the lights shining through the bush, and the shouts in Norwegian and Icelandic. She was here, and she was alive. That was enough for him. 

 


End file.
